Conversations between colleagues in collaborative
software engineering are important for coordinating work,
sharing knowledge and creating knowledge. Overhearing con-
versations of others is useful as well since this: (i) provides
access to the information discussed in the conversations,
(ii) offers the possibility of joining the conversations and
(iii) provides insight in the communication structure of the
project team. When working in a GSE setting, specialized
tooling is required to be able to have conversations and to
know what conversations others are having. In this paper
we discuss how conversations support collaborative software
engineering and how this can be supported by technology in
a GSE environment. To do this, we introduce Communico: a
virtual open conversation space which features: (i) initiating
conversations by selecting people to converse with, (ii) sharing
information regarding the involvement of project members
in these conversations and (iii) havin...